Purevpn Asus Rt N66U – PureVPN Review – 2019

BackgroundPurevpn Asus Rt N66U

PureVPN has been providing VPN services since 2007 It’s not surprising that it now maintains a lengthy list of features: 2,000+ self-managed servers around 180+ locations, a broad selection of protocols, torrent service, DNS and IPv6 leak security, a wise kill switch, five devices allowed and payment via Bitcoin if you require it. Purevpn Asus Rt N66U

Unusual Extras comprise’split tunneling’ (you decide which traffic goes via the VPN, and which uses your ISP) and the capacity to produce an instant Wi-Fi VPN hotspot on your laptop, and connect more devices through that.

The Company provides dedicated apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and Linux, extensions for Chrome and Firefox, and much more tutorials and downloads that will help you set it up on routers, Kodi, Android TV, Amazon’s Fire TV Stick and more.

PureVPN PureVPN subscription options:

12 month plan – $5.75 per month ($69 total cost)

The Monthly strategy is average value at $11 (#8.40), but the yearly program is merely a monthly $2.99 (#2.30), a excellent thing.

This Drops to a monthly $1.32 (#1) if you pay for 5 decades upfront, a total of $79 (#61). The price is really low, although we would not normally recommend signing up for that long, you might think it’s worthwhile. Personal Internet Access delivers a good two-year program for $2.91 (#2.24) per month, for instance, but that is still $70 (#54) in complete, not much less. Even if you only use PureVPN for two or three years, you are getting decent value.

The By employing some marketing trickery company spoils this good belief a little. Each plan has a’last sold’ indicator which tells you if someone signed up, and typically it’s only a few minutes ago.

This is Presumably meant to show you how popular the service is, but we’re not certain that the amounts are real. We refreshed the page a few times, and visited in different browsers, and the’past sold’ figures varied widely. They act like they’re chosen randomly, instead of corresponding to any actual world events.

PureVPN doesn’t promote a trial. We dug deep and found a page for something called a’3-day trial account’, but that’s a little misleading. It’s really only a commercial program in which you pay a non-refundable $2.50 (#2) for 3 days of support.

There is a 31-day money-back guarantee for the Regular plans, which is more generous than many. PureVPN’s refund policy utilized to incorporate some sneaky circumstances where you wouldn’t get back your money if you’d connected over 100 occasions, or used over 3GB of data transport, but we’re happy to see these have been dropped. It is now advertised as a’no questions asked, risk-free, stress-free’ money-back guarantee, so if you are miserable, simply send an email and ask for a refund. Purevpn Asus Rt N66U

Apps

Handing Over your money to PureVPN is unusually simple, as the company supports more or less every single payment format there’s: credit card, PayPal, Bitcoin and several different cryptocurrencies (via CoinPayments), AliPay, assorted gift cards, and over 150 other payment methods via the Paymentwall platform.

After Parting with your cash, download links direct one to programs for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android, the browser extensions and more. We caught the Windows customer, also there came a email with login information, as it downloaded.

Setup Was simple, and after a speedy launch, the Windows customer prompted us to select one of five modes: Stream, Internet Freedom, Security/Privacy, File Sharing and Dedicated IP. We suspect most folks will wonder whether to choose Security/Privacy or Internet Freedom, and there is no instant advice.

The Support site told us that selecting a mode would optimize PureVPN’s settings for this undertaking. For example, security would be prioritized by choosing Security/Privacy but the Streaming and File Sharing manners would optimize for speed.

VPN Beginners might appreciate this strategy as it means they don’t have to understand and tweak the preferences. Since there’s no indication of what each mode does but experts are less inclined to approve. There’s nothing wrong with task-based style selection, but we would prefer a clear display of those settings that are unsuitable for each mode, so experienced users may understand the consequences of their choice.

After You’re able to pick at locations. This has lots of functionality, allowing you to browse locations by countries or cities, search by title, view ping times, or create favorites for speedy recall afterwards.

Alternatively, Deciding upon a Goal choice displays a list of tasks you may want to execute — unblocking Netflix or other streaming sites, using VoIP, accessing social media sites or whatever — and also you can in theory select one of them, and allow PureVPN to choose a host for you.

Connect To a server and the client displays your connection status. There is also an optional bandwidth chart showing your data transfers. You certainly won’t want it, but it is good to see PureVPN making the effort.

The Client makes clever of use of alarms to make sure that you know what is happening. Choose a place and as long as your Windows client is the foreground application, it will not waste your time. But if you switch to the client notices a different program, and a window seems to allow you to know when it connects and disconnects.

A bonus Gravity feature blocks access. We would always like to purchase this kind of attribute from a professional security company, however, Gravity is far smarter than most of the VPN-related contest. As well as blocking harmful links, it can turn on Safe Search for the main search engines, block entire categories of site, whitelist websites you always wish to access, and blacklist websites you don’t. Oh, and ads can be blocked by it , also. Purevpn Asus Rt N66U

The Settings Box is a highlight, particularly for users, since it is absolutely stuffed with extras that are odd and interesting.

The Client does not only have choices to start for instance, on system start and auto-connect. Once you’re protected it can open your default browser.

Need a Different protocol? PureVPN allows you to Pick from OpenVPN TCP/UDP, PPTP, L2TP, SSTP and IKEV. There is also an Automatic alternative which the client suggests offers the best security and speed, but from what we can see, that’s not true: it only cycles through the other protocols until it finds one that works.

Split Tunneling allows you to send just the traffic of specified apps by your VPN. That takes more time to set up, and you have to be very sure which apps you need to redirect, but it may also optimize performance by limiting your data transfer needs.

The VPN Hotspot is an unusual extra, configuring a wireless hotspot which turns the host computer into a restricted VPN router. Once it is enabled, you will be able to use your phone, tablet or other devices to get online through the host’s PureVPN connection.

Along with the List continues, with IPv6 leak protection, an unusually configurable kill switch, along with a multi-port alternative which intelligently chooses the best port, avoiding any closed or throttled options. You may opt to use a non-NAT system to get a unique IP address, port forwarding is available should you require this, along with a Support section does not simply link to the site: it eases creating a support ticket from within the customer.

Although There is plenty of power , the port is a mess. There are normal buttons, radio buttons, icons, links and sidebars, they don’t always work as you would expect, and even though we figured out how to navigate across the machine, it never felt natural or comfortable.

Still, The customer did a good job for us, blocking DNS and WebRTC escapes, and with the kill switch successfully killing our net access if the VPN link fell. If you’ll use some of their client features that are extra, it may appeal.

We took a Look at PureVPN’s Android app, and it had been the exact same story as the Windows version. After choosing a’Mode’ (not certain why), we were able to select countries, cities, or pick a Purpose (optimized for China, unblock this or that streaming assistance, and so on). It’s more awkward to use than the average VPN app, but you will figure it out easily enough.

What is Interesting is the Android program doesn’t drop most of the desktop’s settings and options, which is what we see. It’s a very similar feature set, including a selection of protocol (OpenVPN TCP/UDP or IKEv2), a kill switch, split tunneling, port forwarding, Gravity URL filtering, and much more. If you’ll utilize some or all of that operation, it’s worth a try. Purevpn Asus Rt N66U

Privacy and logging

In a Previous inspection , we pointed out that PureVPN made a big deal of its’zero log’ policy, explaining that this meant the company did not record exactly what you did online. Nevertheless, the small print said there was a session logging, which appeared to add the time you connect to a host, your incoming IP address and the entire bandwidth utilized.

This Is not a detail. Back in October 2017 reports emerged of a guy being arrested on suspicion of conducting”an extensive cyberstalking campaign”, in part according to PureVPN records showing its services were accessed from originating IPs such as the accused man’s home and office. The’zero log’ VPN kept some kind of logs, after all, and those were able to help connect internet actions to a particular account.

PureVPN Type of responded to this in a blog Post, where the firm pointed out that it did not maintain full logs, like your browsing history, and it had not done anything to violate its privacy policy, where the session logging was cited.

This Does not address the issue of why the firm described itself as maintaining’zero logs’ at the main portion of the site, however, when this turned out to not be entirely true. That’s also not a point. Logging policies are based almost entirely on trust, along with a VPN is not likely to be reliable if it’s seen to mislead users or bury the fact of a scenario from the small print.

PureVPN has updated its privacy Coverage, which currently includes possibly the most explicit no-logging sentence we’ve ever observed:’we don’t retain any record of your browsing activities, link logs, records of the VPN IPs assigned to you, your initial IPs, your connection time, the background of your surfing, the sites you visited, your incoming traffic, the content or information you obtained, or the DNS queries generated by you personally.’

The Policy also clarifies the minimum link data it will record –‘We know the day that you connected to a specific VPN location and from which Internet Service Provider’ — and covers plenty of other vital issues in a clear and readable way.

The good news, then, is that PureVPN’s present Privacy policy looks great and says the right things. It is far better than most of the contest. But the catch is that the logging story will lead some folks to wonder whether they can trust what the provider says. We can’t let you know exactly what to think, but it’s well worth checking out equally PureVPN’s original site defense and also its present privacy policy before you make your mind up.

Netflix

PureVPN Creates more of an effort to support website unblocking. The company does not only make airy claims on the site and then forget about these later, it includes special support for streaming within its apps, in theory letting you get Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, BBC iPlayer and a plethora of other services from wherever you are on the planet. Purevpn Asus Rt N66U

We Double-clicked that the BBC option, and viewed as the customer connected and displayed an’err-network-changed’ message. What? This seemed like a serious problem, but the browser had only discovered the shift in our community settings as the client connected, and once this was complete, the BBC iPlayer website opened and opened content as usual.

It was The exact same story with Netflix. The client started our browser before the link was complete, thus we saw the exact same error message, but that vanished automatically, and we were free to browse and flow whatever Netflix content we enjoyed.

You’re Not restricted to the services built to PureVPN’s programs . YouTube wasn’t included on the list but by connecting to a US server in the 21, we were got .

Performance

Our Performance tests involve running custom applications which links assessing download rates time, place and much more. Regrettably, we could not get this working with PureVPN, or figure out why (whether that’s our fault or theirs, we can not be sure).

But An odd warning in the small print clarifies that users aren’t permitted to have more than 200 sessions every day When we did. That won’t concern most people, but it does become an issue when you are running intensive VPN benchmarks across a number of servers. Purevpn Asus Rt N66U

We dropped Back on our old manual way of linking via clients and checking the results from several speed checking sites, including SpeedTest.net, Fast.com and TestMy.net. This will not provide us as much data to work with, but there is still enough to get a feel for exactly what the service can deliver.

Our local UK servers diverse but nevertheless gave very acceptable rates of connection that was 75Mbps to us.

Near European rates were also mildly under average. they have been, although netherlands connections can often deliver much the very same rates for us as UK servers.

US Performance ranged from approximately 30Mbps in the shore, to 50Mbps. That is far from the fastest we’ve seen, but unless you are likely 24 hours of torrenting, it is probably not going to cause you any difficulties.

As usual, Speeds tailed off to the places that were more distant or less typical. For instance, New Zealand averaged 12Mbps, Vietnam was 10Mbps, Taiwan touched 1Mbps, and China ranged down to a speed that the web benchmarking websites stalled mid-test. That puts the size of PureVPN’s system into perspective (having heaps of servers doesn’t matter if many are unusably slow), but if you’re only planning to use the major places, it won’t matter very much.

On a few Occasions, our PureVPN Windows customer wasn’t able to connect to our test server that is chosen. The problem here is that the link didn’t time out for many moments, and the Cancel button did not work, although that is not uncommon.

Everything You Want To Know About PureVPN

The Test of Speed — Just How Fast is PureVPN?

Let us start off by making something clear, i.e. whatever VPN support you use, the online rate is going to take a hit. That strike is a result. The huge majority of VPN services make every attempt to ensure that the strike is as gentle as it can be. Thus, unlike what many people are going to have you think like utilizing dial-up that it’s not likely to be.

PureVPN, compared to other similar VPN services, happens to be much faster. So, yes it does live up to the promise of being the fastest in the business. Purevpn Asus Rt N66U

How we tested the performance was by utilizing Ookala’s nifty speed testing website and program. Then we ran the speed test on both the domestic and global servers. Then we compared the outcomes and that’s the way we discovered PureVPN to be faster.

PureVPN includes a national latency of a mere 6.7% percent. During our downloading evaluations, as a matter of fact, PureVPN improved speeds that by our calculations is an incredible 346 percent percent. We found that competing VPN providers were slower. Some individuals suspect throttled download speeds perhaps because they did not want to stress their servers .

Once it comes to uploads, PureVPN did not really boost it like it did with downloads, but it took a mere 4.5% percent hit. If anything this is still one of the very best scores we’ve seen from a VPN provider.

During our international speed tests, the latency increased by 200 percent. Though download speeds have been still a whopping 403.8percent better than any of the competing products I tested it against. The uploads were 22.7% percentage slower which is second best compared to possibly Hotspot Shield which enhanced the upload speed by 1.4% percent.

A Mind-Blowing Number of Servers

The map on the left allows you bypass the program’s default recommendation and decide on a server on your own. Remember that by default PureVPN selects the server which is the nearest one. When in China I discovered it kept picking up servers in Hong Kong by default that’s not the simple fact but also only nearby that Hong Kong’s cyberspace is not as rigorously censored as mainland China.

PureVPN has over 2000 servers that are spread across 140 countries and 180 areas around the globe. Servers are located in Africa, Central America, South America, North America, Europe, Asia, and Asia. You might think that PureVPN just has servers in countries which block or maybe don’t censor sites, but you would be wrong. Servers in Russia, Turkey, and China are there in case you needed them.

It Does Not Slow Down Your Internet

Over time VPN services, generally speaking, have received bad press for infamously slowing down net rates that consumers have never been happy with clearly. Interestingly, there are still many VPN providers that slow down everything may be already slow net. Luckily, with PureVPN that is not the case even in the event that you use it to flow Netflix, YouTube, etc..

In addition to not slowing down your net, PureVPN supplies quite a few different attributes like robust servers that are located across the world and which scored tremendously during our rate tests. Then there is also the fact that encryption is used by them, with programs for Android and iOS devices. Even though there are several more reasons to think about PureVPN as we’ll analyze in detail below. Purevpn Asus Rt N66U

Excellent Set of Features and Easy to Understand

I’ve used dozens of VPN programs through the years, also PureVPN is like a breath of fresh air. It is quite simple to use and compared to the last time that I used the app its geared towards individuals who are new to using VPNs. As soon as PureVPN loads you are prompted to choose from five options, i.e. Security, Internet Freedom, Stream, Remote/Dedi IP (this attribute offers you a dedicated IP) and Document Sharing. The program delivers.

Another thing I like about PureVPN is that all the attributes are to the point. For instance, their Internet Freedom feature lets you choose what area you need to access Netflix out of, like from the united kingdom, Australia, etc.. Netflix can be also accessed by you where it is otherwise blocked.

Compared to the last time I used PureVPN now around it felt zippier. The interface has been bright, with vibrant pictures some of that could be difficult to read on a display. When you’re connected to a server that is personal, you are going to see the current IP address, connection status, and the length of your session.

The visitors graph gives you a good sense of how much bandwidth is being absorbed, which is useful for anyone on a metered online connection. Nonetheless, it’s important to mention here for all those worrying about information caps that PureVPN doesn’t have any. You’re only limited to what the ISP has in store for you!

Like most other competing VPN services, you choose the server and the country it is based in. You may search for servers and click them to connect. Apparently, some servers based on which you are located are currently going to be faster than others because of lower latency.

You could also choose which protocols to use. Choose between OpenVPN, IKEv2, SSTP, PPTP, and L2TP. Then there is PureVPN’s own stealth protocol which according to the provider ensures the ideal anonymity. Since people like me have PureVPN makes it simple by giving a rate and security rating for each. The key point to note here is because the security improves the rate slows down. Thus, you’ll need to hit a compromise between both based on what’s needed. By default, a protocol it believes best for you is chosen by the program. Most people who do not work for the CIA (pun intended) will be OK using the default alternative. Purevpn Asus Rt N66U

Hands-on and First Impressions

We’ve admittedly used PureVPN earlier, but following a hiatus or two decades we pretty much forgot how things worked. Once you’ve decided to register and download their software, choose a password and you’ll have to enter your email. Perhaps confusingly and interestingly, this isn’t what you’ll use to the software to log-in, but it is used for billing purposes.

Once contributors have compensated, they get an email with the username and password in plain text. We’ve utilized other VPNs using the same method to payment identities that were separate out of consumer identities which guarantees anonymity that was better. Nevertheless we think it could be confusing to users however its something you get used to. Additionally, in our experience the email will property for some reason, so make sure before calling service, to check that too.

Customer Service

PureVPN includes a large support Website with a number of tutorials and troubleshooting guides. The opening page points you Setup Guide, Troubleshoot, For Users in China and to watch Netflix US, for instance, and nearly all of these sections include more content than you’d anticipate.

The Setup Guide has subsections for Devices, Routers and Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, Smart TV, as an example, and even a number of those individual sections have more content than the whole support site of lesser VPNs.

Though It’s an impressive amount of work, we’re Unsure how successful and reliable it might be. We assessed the guide OpenVPN setup manual and found it failed entirely. OpenVPN wasn’t installed correctly, there were no PureVPN settings files, and there was no troubleshooting information from the guide to help us figure out that.

If the Website can not help, you can send an email or increase a support ticket from within the customer. We chose the service and the ticket path performed together with the aid team sending a response to our evaluation question to us in barely more than an hour.

Alternatively, Chat can be used by you . We discovered it could take a minute or two to get a response, and even since we’d obtained to our email query, then, the broker did not give the level of help to us. PureVPN could not get near the level of support we’d received from competitors like ExpressVPN, afterward, but we are still glad the choice is available. And with speedy email service to hand, any live chat problems you might have are not too significant. Purevpn Asus Rt N66U

Last verdict

PureVPN Comes bundled with a heap of powerful features, which can be surprising looking at the purchase price. These do not always work as you may expect, however, and there are lots of usability problems with the programs — but demanding users who will utilize this level of VPN power should give PureVPN a look.